Fate of Garang’s aircraft still unclear
By Khaled Abdel-Aziz and Daniel Wallis
KHARTOUM/KAMPALA, July 31 (Reuters) – The fate of Sudan’s former rebel leader, First Vice-President John Garang, was unclear on Sunday as a minister said an aircraft carrying him was missing while Sudanese television said it had landed safely.
Garang — who waged a two-decade war against Khartoum from southern Sudan until a peace deal in January — left Uganda by helicopter late on Saturday to return to Sudan after talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Uganda said it had lost contact with the aircraft and its military had begun a search. “There has been no communication back” from the aircraft, Ugandan military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Shaban Bantariza said on Sunday evening.
A senior Sudanese government official who declined to be identified said a combined Sudanese-Ugandan-Kenyan search for the aircraft had stopped because of darkness. “It will resume tomorrow morning,” he said.
The official said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir Bashir and Second Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha held an emergency meeting in Khartoum.
“The aircraft was going from Uganda to New Site in southern Sudan when it lost contact last night. We don’t know what happened because there is no communication,” he added.
An accident involving Garang would be a severe blow to the country’s peace process. Under the January accord which ended the 21-year civil war, Garang became vice-president on July 9. Crowds greeted his arrival in Khartoum.
A source in Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), reached by phone in Nairobi, said Garang was safe. “Dr. Garang is fine,” the SPLM source said, but gave no further information.
Sudan’s state television subsequently carried a brief statement saying: “Reports indicate that the aircraft of the first vice-president John Garang landed safely in a camp in the south (of Sudan).”
But shortly afterwards, Sudanese Information Minister Abdel Basit Sabderat told the satellite channel Al Jazeera the aircraft was still missing.
“Now we are intensifying efforts to search and find out where it landed … We hope it landed somewhere safe,” he said.
PEACE DEAL
Confusion over Garang’s fate spread consternation around the region.
“This is the biggest crisis we have faced in Sudan in 20 years,” said Dan Eiffe, a respected humanitarian advocate who has worked in Sudan for 18 years.
“At best he is seriously injured and at worst he is dead. He is the hope of everything. People’s hopes are pinned on him.”
The war started in 1983 when the Islamist Khartoum government tried to impose Islamic Sharia law on the mainly Christian and animist south.
Garang arrived in Uganda on a charter flight on Friday on a personal visit, and was then flown on Museveni’s helicopter to meet the Ugandan president at his ranch at Rwakitura, about 300 km (190 miles) southwest of Kampala.
They were said to have discussed the civil war in northern Uganda and the political future of southern Sudan.
(Additional reporting by Khaled Abdel-Aziz in Khartoum and Wangui Kanina and Bryson Hull in Nairobi)